


infinities

by superstarrgirl



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Niall-centric, and heartbreaking, angst by the bucketload, but there you go, i am so sorry i really am, i don't know why everything i write is sad, niall is maybe dying of cancer I'm so sorry, trigger warning kinda??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 14:05:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstarrgirl/pseuds/superstarrgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-grief does not change you, it reveals you- </p><p>or, </p><p>the ugly start, the terrible middle and a beautiful finish</p>
            </blockquote>





	infinities

**Author's Note:**

> Jesus I am so sorry. I really am. But. Niall is dying of cancer and i hope i got all the symptoms right, i'm just taking it from google and books I've read and stuff. quotes come from 'the fault in our stars' by john green, as well as the title "some infinities are bigger than other infinities". I hope y'all enjoy, and again, no group sex or anything. just, you know, death and heartbreak and all round pain!

It starts with bruises.

They’re only small, peppered across Niall’s skin like kisses, bite-sized marks. Louis is the first one to question Niall about them.

Niall looks at them and laughs, brushes the questions off, says they’re nothing.

But Louis doesn’t miss the way Niall’s eyes widen and the almost involuntary clench of his fingers.

Louis doesn’t miss the fear, if even momentary, that flits across his best friend’s face.

//

It starts with the protruding bones of Niall’s spine.

They’re getting changed, dashing around backstage on the stadium tour, and Niall is running in front of Liam, flat footed. His shirt is already off, and Liam can’t help but notice the way Niall’s spine sticks out, sharp against his skin, cutting. Liam can’t help but notice the knobs and twists.

When they’re back in the hotel room that night, Louis and Harry curled up on the couch asleep and Zayn spread across Niall’s lap, Liam asks quietly, “you eating enough, Ni? I could see your spine today, never seen it before.”

Niall blinks at him through somewhat hazy blue eyes and then cracks a hesitant grin. “Course I am, you know I am. I’m just a bony little fucker.” And that’s it. Liam doesn’t mention it again.

// 

It starts with red.

Niall’s bent double after an interview, hacking into a tissue, his thin frame wracked with the force of his coughs.

“You alright?” Harry slides a water bottle to him, and Niall takes it with trembling hands, straightening up to only be folded again, another coughing fit taking him. Harry gently rubs Niall’s back, cards a hand through his hair, whispers calming words.

When Niall finally straightens up, he downs the water in one go, wipes his mouth and then flashes a tired smile in Harry’s direction, his eyes almost going straight through the taller boy. “Fine.” He sighs out, turning to the trashcan and tossing the tissue and bottle out before following Louis and Zayn out.

Harry trails after a moment later, but not before he catches a glance of the trashcan and the tissue that is now, oddly, coated in something slick, glistening and red.

//

It starts with 2am jokes (maybe).

Niall is seated on the couch in the living room of the bus, a pillow on his chest, staring at the ceiling. “You know it’s 2 in the morning.” Zayn deadpans, scrubbing a hand across his face. Niall doesn’t react to his voice, and Zayn wonders if he’s fallen asleep.

“You know I’m dying.” Niall responds, and Zayn looks for the teasing or humor in his tone, but comes up empty handed.

“Ha-ha, very funny. C’mon, let’s get back to bed.” Zayn extends his hand as though expecting Niall to grab it, to stand and weave toward him and give him the famous Niall Horan Smile, but all Niall does is turn his head and blink at Zayn for a second before turning back. 

“I’m not tired.” Niall whispers. Zayn wants to drag Niall to bed, pick him up and dump him in his bunk and tell him to sleep, knows he should at least sit up and ask Niall what’s going on. But instead, he turns back and retreats to his bunk, trying not to think about how empty and lifeless Niall’s eyes looked.

//

Turns out that joke about Niall dying?

Wasn’t a joke after all.

//

By the time someone thinks to say anything, Niall weighs 90 pounds.

By the time someone thinks to say anything, Niall can barely move without wincing.

By the time someone thinks to say anything, Niall can barely leave the bus even in the middle of the summer without shivering, and the bus is constantly on the highest heating level.

By the time someone thinks to say anything, Niall can’t sleep through the night, gets an hour or so before he’s up, awake before the sun but never breathing a word.

By the time someone thinks to say anything, Niall is almost falling asleep on stage, crashing the moment they get back to the hotel or on the bus, barely making it through meet and greets.

By the time someone thinks to say anything, it’s too late.

//

It ends in a hospital room.

They’re all crowded around Niall, who’s hooked up to machine after machine – machines to help him breathe, to keep his heart pumping. Wires are fed into him, needles stuck into his paper-thin skin. They’re all crowded around Niall, who looks so unbelievably small on the hospital bed, so glassy.

“You knew.” Louis seethes, because he did. Niall knew, must have known for quite some time. “You knew and you didn’t tell us. Why the hell didn’t you tell us? Answer me, dammit!" 

“Lou.” Zayn’s voice is soft yet loud in the silence of the room, sweet and slow like honey gliding off a spoon, heartbroken like a boy who’s watching his world fall to pieces. “Enough.”

Niall looks to Louis, eyes no longer bright and alive, but dull and dark, like the darkest parts of the ocean where only the monsters live. “Telling you wouldn’t have delayed it.” Niall murmurs, reaching for Louis’ hand and entwining their fingers together tightly, as though to keep himself grounded.

“No.” Louis stutters out. “It wouldn’t.” And then he breaks.

//

It ends with an apology.

Louis, Zayn and Harry are down in the hospital cafeteria, drinking and eating. At the foot of Niall’s bed is the third dinner in a row he’s turned his nose up at. Liam, seated beside Niall in a plastic chair, thinks of the irony, how a boy who could eat his body weight in ten minutes now can’t look at food without throwing up.

Niall is sleeping; his whole face relaxed and peaceful, but even sleep cannot erase the bags under his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks. Liam scoots the chair closer and lays his head on Niall’s bed, watching the younger boy through heavily lidded eyes.

He picks up Niall’s hand and threads his fingers through the other boy’s, feeling the bones and twists against his own palm. “I’m so sorry.” Liam whispers to the dark of the room, and there are so many things to be sorry for, so many words that can’t be said in the small time they have left. 

But mostly, Liam is sorry for all the things Niall had to go through alone. 

// 

It ends with a bucket list.

The four arrive at the hospital one night to a sleeping Niall. His whole body is still, the monitor beside his bed beeping loudly and obnoxiously, but providing a feeling of calm to the four boys. They take up their positions, Louis leaning against the wall, Zayn and Harry seated on either side of Niall and Liam in his chair. 

When Harry leans over to press a gentle kiss to Niall’s forehead, paper crinkles under his hand, and he pulls a single sheet from underneath the bed covers. There are three things on it, written in Niall’s chicken scratch, hardly legible.

**Niall Horan’s Bucket List**

  1. **1.** **Apologize to everyone**
  2. **2.** **Get a tattoo**



A tattoo.

When Harry reads the second item, even though there are tears blurring his vision, he takes the Sharpie off the table and hands it to Zayn with clear instructions of what to draw on Niall’s wrist.

It takes Zayn half an hour, and the drawing is completed by the time Niall wakes, and when the blond sees it he manages a weak smile at Harry, a secretive smile.

A screwdriver, to match the others’ screw tattoos, something Niall had always considered getting but never had the courage to do. 

Harry smiles back wearily and crosses one thing off the bucket list, and then, after a moment, crosses off the other, telling Niall that he has no one to apologize to.

//

It ends with a quote.

Zayn’s sat beside Niall, keeping watch while the others go home to Liam’s flat and have a shower. He’s reading ‘The Fault In Our Stars’, alternating between absorbing words and watching Niall watch him.

“Read me something.” Niall finally croaks out, and Zayn doesn’t even hesitate, finds his favorite passage and starts to read.

'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.

'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'

I was kind of crying by then.’ 

By the time Zayn has finished, he’s crying and Niall might be too, hand grasping desperately for Zayn, and Zayn complies, laying down with Niall and feeling the younger boy’s heart beat against his chest, weak but persistent, giving up the fight but not quite done.

They sleep like that, but before darkness drags them under, Zayn whispers into the blond wisps that tickle his chin, _some infinities are bigger than other infinities – you are my infinity, Niall James Horan_. _I love you_. 

//

It ends in goodbye.

It ends in a cold, quiet and empty room.

It ends with Maura and Bobby crying, Harry crying, Liam crying, Zayn crying, everyone crying. Except Louis. Louis doesn’t cry, just doesn’t feel.

It ends silently, a whisper in the night, a flame fizzling out.

It ends before it’s truly begun.

//

The funeral is the day of Niall’s twenty-second birthday, and the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and five boys are standing on top of a hill saying goodbye to the most wonderful human being that ever existed. 

Zayn forgets to breathe when the casket is lowered, a gasp slipping out of his mouth. Maura Horan squeezes their hands in turn and looks at them with eyes so much like Niall’s that Zayn has to look away. 

“He loved you all so much.” Maura tells them, Harry and Liam start to sob, Louis ticks his head to acknowledge that she’s spoken, but Zayn steps up and kisses her on the cheek, whispers _thank you_ in her ear. 

After all, it was her who brought Niall into the world, and it was her who had to watch him leave.

// 

Louis drinks himself into a stupor. 

Liam kind of forgets how to live, simply goes through the motions.

Harry starts to scream in his sleep, stays at Zayn’s flat every night and never really goes home.

Zayn just tries to stand tall and remind himself that there is a life to live. (But how can there be a world without a Niall?)

One Direction falls apart. 

//

Louis’ mum calls him up one night and starts to yell at him, screaming about how he’s killing himself, sending himself to an early grave and how _yes darling, he was your best friend, I know, and I’m so sorry he died but please don’t do this please stop drinking please start trying to live again, don’t kill yourself._  

Louis breathes heavily down the phone for a moment, and then rasps out, “I was dead long before I put a bottle to my lips.”

He hangs up and Jay doesn’t call back.

//

Liam used to fancy the idea of being a hero, saving someone’s life. He used to like the idea of being a firefighter or a police officer, someone that worked for the greater good of the community. 

But how can he be a hero when the one person who needed his help, he couldn’t save?

//

Harry starts to forget the sound of Niall’s laughter, his post-sleep voice, how adorable and soft and mushy he looked in sweatpants and an overgrown sweatshirt, hair mussed up and eyes tired but full.

All he can see is how thin and frail Niall became, like porcelain, how weak his bones grew to be and how his own body gave out on him, how the one thing that was supposed to be keeping him alive just… _stopped_. 

There are days that Harry wishes it had been him, days when he means it more than he’s meant anything else in the world.

// 

Zayn gets a tattoo on his forearm one night at midnight, when the world is asleep and the only tattoo parlor looks filthy and shifty and he’s probably going to die from a disease but he doesn’t care. 

He walks out an hour later with a tattoo bandage wound across his arm, covering the brand new tattoo, but he can feel the words raised against his skin, black and sharp and there.

 _Grief does not change you_.

//

To those who wake one morning to the news of, remaining four of boy band One Direction dying overnight after collision, it’s tragic. An untimely death for four boys with their futures ahead of them.

When Louis wakes to see Niall standing over him, blue eyes so bright they’re almost blinding, when Liam wakes to a smacking kiss from a boy with chapped lips he thought would never brush his cheek again, when Harry is brought to life with calloused fingers pressing into his hair, when Zayn is woken by four boys hovering around him, staring expectantly, and when Louis huffs out, “you’re late, like always,” but he’s smiling, when Niall begins to giggle, causing a chain affect of bubbling laughter to ricochet around the group, when Niall looks around at the four boys he’s been watching, he thinks to himself,

 _Home_.


End file.
